generalspeaking

These People Are Dangerous

"It was very dusty, and there were absolutely no trees, no shade at all. The United Nations refugee agency had set up camp on the Kenyan side of the border, at the bottom of the hill. Dozens of bright blue plastic tarps clustered near a large, well-made tarpaulin tent where people were lining up in the sun to register. We passed a health center - really just a place where you could report the dead - around which were thousands and thousands of tents.
"The farther we walked, the shabbier the tents became. At first, most of them were blue tarpaulins strung onto branches and twigs, with whole families sheltering under them. A little farther on, the tarpaulins ran out and thin branches and twigs were just shoved into the soil, with cloths arranged over them, women's shawls or a shirt, so the children could sit in the shade. The tents were clumped around little waterholes in the sand, some of them no more than muddy puddles. The smell of recent rain was still in the air, but the puddles were already evaporating in the heat.
"As we left the car we walked past two men who were arguing about a jerry can of water. One of them lost his temper and pulled a gun, and my heart thudded. Suddenly all the men around us had guns -pistols or rifles. My eye caught a series of spent bullets on the ground, nestled in the sand. Three or four older men walked up to the man with the gun with their arms out and said, "Take the water. It's yours - go," and gave it to him. He sat down on the sand and put his hands over his head and cried. His clothes were torn; his toes poked out of his broken shoes; he looked wretched.
"The older men tried to take his gun away, but they couldn't get him to give it up. They gave the other man another can of water. Everyone badly wanted everything to stay calm - suddenly everyone was an expert in conflict prevention. I crept up to Mahamuud and said, "these people are dangerous." He looked at me and said, "They are dangerous. They are hungry and thirsty. They have been walking for a long time. They have nothing left to lose. They feel like they are dead already."
"He was right. The people all around us looked like ghosts. They were gaunt. They had been moving away from their homes for weeks, and had lost everything along the way. Babies had died; there were listless children in almost every mother's arms. They had been attacked by bandits, and they had crossed all kinds of battlefronts. When I looked into people's eyes, it was disorienting. they looked as if they had been to Hell and back." Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel

That was a description of Somalia after the downfall of the Siad Barre regime, and the resulting tribal-led civil war. With Barre gone and his Communist-led supporters in free fall, Islamists came to the fore. Now Somalia is plagued with another curse, that of al-Shabab, the terrorist group trying to take over Somalia and enact strict Sharia, while they prey upon the poor and terrorize those attempting to escape famine and strife.

Once again, the United Nations has set up massive refugee camps in Kenya, at the border between the two countries. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis have fled their villages to try to find safe haven for their families. Humanitarian aid agencies are trying to feed the refugees, to give them the hope of prolonged life, to replace their dread and fear. Conditions are as dreadful for this new generation of refugees huddled in overcrowded refugee camps, as they were for the previous starving refugees.

And now, al-Shabab has once again chosen to ban humanitarian agencies such as UNICEF, the World Health Organization, UNHCR, and other nations' humanitarian aid groups from the areas that they control. Armed and masked men have violently taken over the aid offices, and ordered aid workers to depart. They were already working in Somalia on a list given clearance by al-Shabab's "Office for Supervising the Affairs of Foreign Agencies."

The outlook for the welfare of hundreds of thousands of Somalis, most of them suffering the effects of the drought-caused famine, will be at even greater risk. "You can't tell if this is one commander acting unilaterally, or a proper edict sent down from al-Shabab's bosses. But the fact is right now, everything's stopped. We're looking at what we can do in the next few days, then we'll assess longer-term strategies.

It could be a real mess."

Labels: Islamism, Terrorism, Traditions, Tragedy

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, November 30, 2011